A Riveting Experience

Quite literally riveting, in this case. For an upcoming project, I have finally stepped into the realm of Rosie the Riveter and got myself an air-powered rivet gun.

Or I guess a "Pneumatic Nail Pulling Gun" according to whoever manufactures this. And yes, it's perfectly reasonable to use a manual rivet setter, but what do I look like, some kind of peasant? I think not.

So, how well does this rivet?

Hmm, yup.

That is one pulled nail alright.

Of course, anyone with at least some exposure to riveting and sheet metal work will be familiar with the amazing utility that clecos offer, and fear not, I will not abstain from basking in their wonder.

And no, I don't intend to rivet this electrical box closed. It just happened to be close at hand and have the right size screw holes to demonstrate the clecos in action.

Too Many Teeth

This isn't an AI hallucination, nor the trickery of the fae folk. It is, in fact, a saw blade with many more than the usual number of teeth.

The 32t blade in front is what originally came on my chop saw and it's been serving me well. For the most part I'm cutting construction lumber (and occasionally some aluminum extrusions) so the low tooth count makes for pretty quick and efficient cuts.

However, lately I've been noticing that the cut quality isn't quite flawless, and it might have degraded somewhat from how it was originally performing. Or I might be imagining things, I dunno. Either way, since I have some trim work coming up, I decided to add a fine cut 80t blade to my tool chest.

Swapping the blade isn't too difficult, luckily. You just loosen one screw which both props up the blade guard and lets you slide it back out of the way slightly, then unscrew (with a reverse thread) the bolt holding the blade in place.

So how does it cut trim?

Well, judging from this test cut on a piece of scrap MDF trim that I removed from around the old attic hatch, I'd say it does quite well indeed.

For the sake of comparison, here's a piece of universal wood cut with the 32t blade.

And the other side of the same piece, cut with the 80t blade.

Don't mind the fact that one side is soaking wet. It's raining outside right now. What's clear to see is that the splintering and tear-out is greatly reduced with this blade, which is exactly what one would expect.

The downside is, of course, that the cut speed is much slower, so I'll still be swapping back to the 32t blade for utility cuts. This 80t blade will just be for trim work when the need arises.

The Uppening Part 2

So when we last left off on this attic ladder project, we were facing the spectre of having to deal with an electrical run that went right through the middle of the opening I planned to cut to fit the ladder into. So, let's add a quick junction box.

And another.

To reroute that line around the outside (around the outside, around the outside). I also took the opportunity to disconnect the recessed light at the near end of the hall, since it will shortly be removed for relocation later on in the project.

Since it, too, is right in the middle of where the ladder is going. This is gonna be another long one, so click through to keep reading.

Bender Bending Rodriguez

Straight out of the deepest bowels of China emerges a crate of mysteries and wonder; what could be inside?

Well, let's break the seal of this wooden tomb to find out.

Ok the quality of the hardware they used to put this crate together isn't inspiring much confidence, but it's at least commensurate with the price I paid.

Secrets revealed! It's a 24 inch box-and-pan brake.

First things first, let's strip off the... I dunno, whatever chemical it is that's 3c/gal cheaper than cosmoline and causes 6 times as much cancer.

Ok that's cleaner at least, and we also get to see the party trick of the box-and-pan brake: the removable fingers, which allow you to fit partially bent parts into the brake to perform further bends. Though obviously you wouldn't normally remove all of them at the same time.

It does give us a good look at the casting though, and I have to say I'm impressed.

I'm not sure I'd be able to make cast iron that uniformly porous if I tried. Well, let's hope they overbuilt this casting.

Anyway, the fingers go back into place so we can see how it looks.

Unsurprisingly, it looks cheap and Chinese. But how does it work?

Some leftover 24-gauge galvanized steel seems like a reasonable first test. This brake is supposed to be rated to bend up to 20-gauge.

The brake hungers to sink its teeth into metal.

A simple 90-ish degree bend should do.

And bend #1 appears to be a success. Let's go ahead and add another just to be sure.

Yup, that seems reasonable. Got a 5/8 flange, an inch wide trough, and whatever was left over as the other flange.

Now let's play around with the real party trick, doing a perpendicular bend.

Some decidedly sloppy notching should give us enough clearance (spoiler: it won't).

And using the 1 inch finger, the bend looks not half bad.

Let's just ignore the other side where I accidentally smashed the two flanges together instead of getting them to bypass cleanly.

Ah well, practice makes perfect. I should note that I have the machine set up here for a pretty gentle bend radius, which is adjustable using some cams at the back of the frame. I'll try tighter bends later, but for now this is a successful first test.

All Laser, No Shark

So the other day I was reminded that laser levels exist. I've had it in the back of my mind to maybe pick one up at some point, but I've always been a little put off by the cost of what is, essentially, just a fancy laser pointer. It's been simple enough to get by without them, so spending a few hundred dollars just didn't feel justified.

Well, out of curiosity I took a peek on Amazon and it turned out that a fairly decent one was on sale for a fairly decent price, so I smashed the "Buy Now" button and went about with the rest of my day.

Curiously, though, I didn't get a confirmation email from Amazon for my order, so I took a peek on my orders page and discovered that for some unknown reason, my order had been cancelled. So I tried again, and again I got no confirmation email, and the order showed up immediately as cancelled.

Peculiar.

I'm not paid to debug Amazon's software bugs, so I just waited until the next day and tried again, only to have the order insta-cancelled a third time. I contacted support and they were like "idk your bank is probably rejecting the charge," which seemed very unlikely and, after checking in with my bank, turned out to be definitely not the case. Nonetheless, I tried deleting and re-adding my CC and lo and behold, the purchase was insta-cancelled again.

So again with the tech support chat, and after trying, with their encouragement, for a 5th time, they just gave up and gave me a $10 credit as an apology for apparently being incapable of carrying out their core functions.

But it actually turned out for the better, because I headed over to eBay to see what the used market had available, and as it turns out laser levels are one of those things that people buy, use for exactly one project, and then either try to return to where they bought it or flip it on the used market so it doesn't just end up as a dust collector on some shelf in their garage until the end of all time.

So I found an appealing looking listing for a slightly upgraded model from the one I had initially tried to buy on Amazon (it had the optional USB-C rechargeable battery instead of just being AA powered) and purchased it.

Only for that purchase to be cancelled. Apparently the seller was out of town and wouldn't return in time to get the item shipped out within eBay's allowable time window. But at least that was a valid excuse and not just the site failing.

But 7th time lucky, I found one for an even better price, ordered it, and miracle of miracles, here it is.

This is the Bosch GLL50-20GL, which is differentiated from the GLL50-20G by the inclusion of the aforementioned USB-C battery. It's a cross-line laser, so it shoots a horizontal and vertical line out one side of it, rather than having a full 360 line in three axes, which is fine by me. Having the triple-beam 360 thing is nice in some situations, but it's a lot more money and a lot more bulk.

But does it work? The answer is yes, yes it does.

I can check to see how out-of-level my kitchen counters are (not much, as it turns out) by shining the beam at a tape measure, and the line is pretty easy to read in normal lighting conditions. At least, it is indoors; I haven't tried it outside in full sun, so mileage may vary there.

As for my walls, they're out of plumb but not by much, and the measurement with the laser seems to match what my bubble level says.

It's got a 1/4-20 tripod mount in the bottom, and a magnetic bracket so that you can stick it to the side of something magnetic, as well as one of those nail eyelet hole things so you can hang it up on a nail or a screw or something.

So lots of convenient options there. I expect I'll be able to put this to good use.

I Have The Power

Many, many years ago I got this APC Back-Ups XS 1300. Ever since then I have had to bear the detestable curse of owning it.

You see, a UPS is supposed to reduce the frequency of disruptions from power glitches. However, APC made two critical errors when designing this particular unit.

The first error is that they did not include any sort of battery health monitoring and reporting. Their suggested method for determining the health of the battery was "unplug the unit from the wall and observe if the output shuts off earlier than expected".

When the regular monitoring of the status of your UPS involves abruptly cutting off power to the attached loads, you know something has already gone very, very wrong. But it gets worse than that.

You see, the second error they made was in what the UPS does when the battery doesn't (and/or can't) hold sufficient charge to even begin to power the attached load, a situation that is guaranteed to occur with some regularity due to the insanity of the battery test procedure.

For context, a regular power supply on most modern wall-powered equipment can continue to supply power to the system it's integrated with across momentary power line blips, or reasonable voltage sags.

However, when the APC UPS detects even the slightest blip or sag, it jumps into action and attempts to transfer the load to battery, only to discover that the battery can't power the load, at which point it goes into shutdown and switches off the output.

So the UPS basically takes a perfectly survivable power blip and turns it into a hard power cut to the attached systems. Fucking brilliant. Only APC could design a UPS that interrupts the power MORE than if the load had been plugged into the wall directly.

Thankfully the solution to this is simple.

We replace the UPS with one that is hopefully not designed by complete mouth-breathing imbeciles. Hopefully.

This new model is packing a bunch of lithium batteries rather than relying on lead acid cells. I'm hoping this means it'll last longer than the few short years that the SLA batteries in the old unit would.

But I suppose only time will tell. Honestly, though, the only thing I really care about with this UPS is not having my clock radio lose its time whenever the power drops for a few seconds.

The Uppening Part 1

So it's another multi-part adventure. I thought I might be able to get this project done in one week with time to spare, but somehow I am impeccably consistent about underestimating how long it takes me to do these things.

So what is this project? Well, this is the access into my attic. There's not much up in the attic except for insulation, fossilized rat turds, and some poorly done wiring, and this sort of makeshift hatch is more than sufficient for accessing that.

But I have plans for putting some actual equipment in the attic, the details of which I will cover when the time comes, and so I'll need better access than this hatch can provide. Or, to be more specific, I need an opening larger than this to even get it up there in the first place.

So let's get to work improving that access. Click through to read on.